News Release

OAK BROOK, Illinois, USA, September 10, 2009 – Lions celebrate a milestone this month with the screening of the 10 millionth child through the Sight for Kids program. A program of Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Sight for Kids is saving or restoring sight to children throughout Asia.

The leading cause of blindness in children and adolescents is uncorrected refractive error. Sight for Kids screens children for refractive error and other vision problems, including myopia (nearsightedness), which causes significant vision loss in more than 15 percent of children under the age of 15 in many Asian countries. Vision loss can severely harm a child's development, since learning is often visually based

LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care collaborated to develop the Sight for Kids program. Local Lions, Johnson & Johnson staff, and local medical personnel coordinate screenings in countries throughout Asia. To date, Johnson & Johnson has committed $1.55 million to fund the program.

The program screens children in, Korea, Thailand, China, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines. Of the 10 million children screened, more than 275,000 have been referred to physicians for further evaluation, more than 75,000 have received glasses and more than 55,000 have been treated for various eye conditions.

Sight for Kids is not only saving the sight of children in Asia, but is also providing them with the chance for a better life. Screening 10 million children in Asia is just one example of LCIF’s efforts in sight prevention.

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Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) was founded in 1968 as the charitable arm of Lions Clubs International, the world’s largest service club organization with nearly 1.3 million members in approximately 45,000 Lions clubs in more than 205 countries and geographical areas around the world. LCIF provides grants for vital community and global projects that meet a wide range of humanitarian needs, including the SightFirst program, a worldwide endeavor to eliminate preventable blindness. For more information, visit the Web site at www.lcif.org.